SEATTLE (AP) — In cycling through two coaches in as many years, the Seattle Kraken have made it abundantly clear the last few seasons haven’t been up to par.
Take it from co-owner Samantha Holloway, who spoke about the situation Tuesday at Kraken Community Iceplex.
“What we would like to be is a sustained playoff team,” Holloway said.
That hasn’t been the case four years into the franchise’s existence, as the Kraken have qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs just once. A seventh-place finish in the Pacific Division this season prompted Monday’s firing of coach Dan Bylsma after just one year on the job, as well as some front office shake-ups.
Former general manager Ron Francis was promoted to team president, with previous assistant general manager Jason Botterill filling his void to take over day-to-day responsibilities. Francis thanked Bylsma for his efforts and conceded it would have been easier to retain the Stanley Cup-winning coach, a sentiment that co-owner Tod Leiwke echoed.
But, a change was believed to be necessary.
“I thought our team could use more structure, more details in our approach,” Francis said of Bylsma’s dismissal. “And, at the end of the day, we didn’t get the results that we were expecting this year.”
Expectations weren’t terribly high for the Kraken in a tough Western Conference, but the team took some notable steps back. High-priced goalie Philipp Grubauer conceded his net to Joey Daccord as the Kraken struggled defensively, and the team’s top offensive talent couldn’t generate enough scoring to adequately compensate.
The way Botterill sees it, the Kraken need to find a system that takes better advantage of the team’s strengths. That starts with hiring a coach who is a strong leader, Botterill said, as well as someone who can make good use of the resources at the franchise’s disposal within the research and development department.
Whoever is hired will have nearly a completely new coaching staff, with the lone exception being the retention of assistant coach Jessica Campbell, the first woman to work on the bench for an NHL franchise. The next Kraken coach, though, will sign on with the understanding that the current roster has a ways to go from being a serious playoff contender.
“We have to continue to improve and add to our skill level in all areas,” Botterill said. “It’s not as if we’re one player away right now from a Stanley Cup championship. We have to become a perennial playoff team first, and then find a way.”
There are a number of reasons Botterill is adamant better days are ahead for the Kraken. The franchise has 10 picks across the first two rounds of the next three drafts, as well as a number of nearly NHL-ready prospects pushing for roster spots.
For the Kraken to return to the postseason for the second time in five years, though, they anticipate having to venture outside the organization for reinforcements. Botterill acknowledged that both buyouts and trades will be on the table for a team that is projected to have eight players making at least $5 million apiece next season.
Much is up in the air regarding the Kraken and their future, ranging from who will be the next coach, to team identity and roster composition. It’s why Botterill anticipates a busy first summer on the job — one that he’s looking forward to.
“I’m excited about the resources that I’m going to have at my disposal to improve this roster,” Botterill said. “And, I can assure you that we will improve next year and build on this team for not only a solid year next year, but for years to come.”
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FILE - Seattle Kraken general manager Ron Francis speaks during an NHL hockey press conference, July 3, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond, file)
FILE - In this June 25, 2018, file photo, Buffalo Sabres general manager Jason Botterill addresses the media during an NHL news conference in Buffalo N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes, File)
PARIS (AP) — Kim Kardashian said a silent prayer — for her sister, her best friend, her family — as a masked man pulled her toward him in a Paris hotel room during the 2016 jewelry heist that changed her life. She wore a bathrobe. Her hands were zip-tied. Her mouth was taped. She thought she wouldn’t survive.
“I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me,” she told a Paris court Tuesday. “I absolutely did think I was going to die.”
She said she was getting ready for bed when she heard stomping on the stairs. At first, she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning drunk from a night out at Paris Fashion Week.
“Hello? Hello? Who is it?” she called out. Then masked men stormed the room.
She grabbed her phone but didn’t know the French emergency number. She tried to call her sister and bodyguard, but one man stopped her. The men threw her on the bed, zip-tied her hands and pressed a gun to her.
“I have babies," Kardashian said, according to her testimony. "I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”
She was carried into the bathroom. One man taped her mouth. She was told she’d be OK if she stayed quiet.
The last time Kardashian saw the men that police say robbed her, she was locked in the marble bathroom while masked assailants stole more than $6 million in jewelry. On Tuesday, nearly a decade later, she faced them again — this time, from the witness stand.
Her testimony marked the emotional climax of a trial that has gripped France and reignited debates about the cost of fame and what it means to live in public.
At the time of the robbery, Kardashian was one of the most recognized women on the planet. A fashion icon. A reality star. A billionaire business mogul. She had mastered a new kind of celebrity — one broadcast in real time, post by post, to millions of followers.
But in the early hours of Oct. 3, 2016, that visibility became a weapon against her. The robbery marked a turning point for Kardashian, and for how the world understood vulnerability in the digital age.
Investigators believe the attackers followed Kardashian’s digital breadcrumbs — images, timestamps, geotags — and exploited them with old-school criminal methods.
Dressed in black with defiant sparkling diamonds, Kardashian on Tuesday stood across from her mother, Kris Jenner, in the heavily secured courtroom. Her voice trembled as she thanked French authorities for “allowing me to share my truth.”
She described how the attackers arrived at her hotel disguised as police officers, dragging the concierge upstairs in handcuffs. “I thought it was some sort of terrorist attack,” she said.
One attacker demanded she turn over her diamond ring valued at $4 million on the bedside table. “He said, ‘Ring! Ring!’ and he pointed to his hand,” she recalled.
French prosecutors say the assailants — most in their 60s and 70s — were part of a seasoned criminal ring. Two defendants have admitted being at the scene. One claims he didn’t know who she was.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has since died. Another was excused due to illness. The French press dubbed them les papys braqueurs — “the grandpa robbers” — but prosecutors insist they were no harmless retirees.
They face charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and membership in a criminal gang, offenses that carry the potential for life imprisonment.
After the men fled, Kardashian rubbed the tape against the bathroom sink to free her hands. She hopped downstairs, still bound, to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. Fearing the robbers might return, they went onto the balcony and hid in bushes. While lying there, Kardashian called her mother.
Earlier in the trial, Harouche recalled hearing Kardashian scream from upstairs: “‘I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, ‘Take everything. I need to live.’”
Harouche locked herself in a bathroom and texted Kardashian’s sister and bodyguard: “Something is very wrong.”
She described how her friend was “beside herself ... she just was screaming."
Judge David de Pas asked whether Kardashian had made herself a target by posting images of herself with “jewels of great value.” Harouche rejected the premise. “Just because a woman wears jewelry, that doesn’t make her a target,” she said. “That’s like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”
After the robbery, critics slammed Kardashian for flaunting her wealth, including designer Karl Lagerfeld who told the Associated Press she was “too public” with her jewelry. But as details of the heist emerged, public opinion grew sympathetic.
The heist triggered a cultural shift, prompting publicists and managers to urge clients to delay social media posts, remove location tags and think twice before flashing luxury online. Yet Kardashian’s own image, some say, continues to complicate that narrative. As she testified Tuesday about her trauma, journalists received a press release touting her Paris courthouse appearance: “Kim Kardashian stuns …wearing a show-stopping $1.5 million diamond necklace by Samer Halimeh New York, featuring 80 flawless diamonds.” Visibility, it seemed, remains currency.
She told the court her house in Los Angeles was robbed shortly afterward in what appeared to be a copycat attack. Without security guards, she said, “I can’t even sleep at night.” She now keeps between four and six guards at home.
“I started to get this phobia of going out,” Kardashian said. “This experience really changed everything for us.”
At the time of the 2016 robbery, she said, her bodyguard was staying in a separate hotel: “We assumed that if we were in a hotel it was safe, it was secure.”
She said Paris had once been a sanctuary, a place where she would walk at 3 or 4 a.m., window shopping, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate. It "always felt really safe,” she said. “It was always a magical place.”
Kardashian, who is studying to become a lawyer herself, said she was grateful for the opportunity “to tell my truth” in the packed Paris courtroom.
“This is my closure,” she said. “This is me putting this, hopefully, to rest.”
Kim Kardashian, center left, accompanied by her mother Kris Jenner, center right, leaves the justice palace after testifying, regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Michael Rhodes, lawyer for Kim Kardashian, speaks with the media at the justice palace after the testimony of his client regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Kim Kardashian leaves the justice palace after testifying, regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Gabriel Dumenil, lawyer for one of the men accused in the 2016 armed robbery of Kim Kardashian, arrives at the palace of justice, Tuesday, May 13, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian, center, accompanied by her mother Kris Jenner, right, leaves the justice palace after testifying, regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian, center, arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kris Jenner, center, the mother of Kim Kardashian, arrives for a trial regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from Kim Kardashian's Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
In this artist sketch, Kim Kardashian testifies regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Valentin Pasquier)
Kim Kardashian waves as she arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian, center, walks up the steps of the palace of justice as she arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian waves as she arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian waves as she arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Kim Kardashian waves as she arrives to testify regarding a robbery of millions of dollars in jewels from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
FILE - Kim Kardashian attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala on May 5, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Abderrahmane Ouatiki, center, who was working as a hotel receptionist, is flanked by his lawyers Mohand Ouidja, left, and Henri De Beauregard during the trial of the 2016 armed robbery of Kim Kardashian, at the palace of justice, Tuesday, May 13, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
Abderrahmane Ouatiki, center right, who was working as a hotel receptionist, is accompanied by his lawyer Mohand Ouidja, center left, as they arrive for the trial of the 2016 armed robbery of Kim Kardashian, at the palace of justice, Tuesday, May 13, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
FILE - Kim Kardashian arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on March 2, 2025, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
